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We can learn so much about selling from our day-to-day lives. Take waiters and waitresses at restaurants for example. We can experience quite a range of services:

Simply not well trained. This is the person who has not been trained or mentored well. He/she has no sense of timing, does not check in and often simply disappears for long periods of time, etc. People who are sent into the “field” without good training can lose customers, and the restaurant owner (or us as business owners) may never know what happened.

Probably had some training but is rough around the edges. This is the waiter or waitress who butts into conversations and does not listen well. He is checking in and doing what he has been told to do, but with a lack of maturity or grace. He has been trained, but not mentored by a real pro, a big difference.

I have worked with great salespeople at all levels all over the world. Some of them generate high six-figure and seven-figure incomes. Here is what all of these superstars have in common . . . they have a keen sense of the value of their time and they do a ferocious job of managing it very, very well.

Now you may say that you do not have the resources they use to manage time, but many of them did not at the beginning either. In any case, some of the principles they follow can apply to anyone who gets paid for producing.

I was managing a new office building at the beginning of my career. A major tenant was moving in that night and I always stayed around for big moves. I had changed into my jeans and was sitting with my head janitor when two flustered men came storming in to our building office. We figured they were part of the moving crew. They literally started hollering at us.

“We left our keys behind! We need keys and we need them now! We don’t have any keys!” Read more

A core element of a number of well-respected training programs is something called the trial close. In effect, a trial close tests the prospect’s commitment to the sale prior to absolutely asking for the order.

Let’s say we are selling an investment product. After walking through the discussion, we might stop and ask something like . . . Read more